On arrival, we were greeted by our lovely cooking teacher Ellie Hyewon Lee: a specialist in Korean and Western food, she has 10 years teaching experience and has worked on many Korean Dramas as a food stylist. Friendly and impressively knowledgeable, she showed us to our individual prep areas where all of our ingredients and equipment were carefully laid out waiting for us.
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| Our carefully laid out prep area. |
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| Our pancake mix, ready to go! |
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| Some enthusiastic mixing going on here! |
The ingredients for our pancake were as follows:
Korean pancake mix, which Hyewon kindly informed us we could make ourselves by mixing regular flour, seasoning and a little corn starch.
Green onion
Chilli-peppers
Mixed seafood (usually from a frozen bag)
1 egg
Water (equal parts to the flour)
Method:
A little chopping, followed by a lot of mixing.
Putting our ready-to-go pancake mixture to one side, it was time to move onto the star of the show: Dak galbi (닭갈비), which is the Korean name for a mouth-watering,spicy stir-fried chicken dish. One of my all-time favourite Korean dishes, I will definitely be missing it when I go back home and was happy to find how easy and quick it was to make.
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| Our dak-galbi ingredients. Ingredients: Diced chicken (traditionally chicken ribs should be used, but Hyewon explained to us that nowadays the whole chicken can be used) Onion Sweet potato cabbage Green onion Carrot Instant ramyeon noodles (optional
After finely chopping all of the vegetables, it was time to make the spicy red sauce. This consisted of:
- hot pepper flakes (it is this and not the hot pepper sauce that determined how spicy the dish will be)
-1 tablespoon of sugar syrup (can be substituted for regular sugar)
-2 tablespoons of soy sauce
- minced garlic
-sesame oil
After combining these ingredients and stirring the resulting sauce into our chicken and vegetables, we moved over to the gas range, where the magic would happen.
 Dak Galbi sizzling away deliciously.  Left: seafood pajeon, sadly a few of us burnt ours because we were too busy talking to Hyewon, oops! Right: Dak galbi  Posing with our creations!
When both dishes were ready to eat, we made our way through to the dining room to enjoy the delicious Korean feast we had prepared with our own fair hands! In addition to the main dishes we had prepared,we were also were served a variety of Korean side-dishes (known as 'banchan', 반찬, in Korean) and rice as an accompaniment to our meal.
 Ready to tuck in! Cooking the two dishes cost us 60,000KRW (about 30 quid, if my mum is reading, which I know she is). However, as an added bonus for the additional fee of 5,000KRW (about 3 quid, mum) they let you get all glammed up in full traditional gear and strut around pretending you are Korean royalty, which I very much enjoyed. as my friends will tell you. For a full price list and menu CLICK HERE  The picture of Korean sophistication. 
This style of hanbok with the long front is the style befitting Korean Royalty. I think I play the role well ;)
Overall, it was a great morning, we cooked some lovely dishes and learned some very interesting information about Korean Cuisine. Definitely a must-do for anybody living in Korea and interested in cooking. Some of my friends loved it so much they are even planning a second visit! |
